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Thirty-one-year-old Helen E. Parris (1872—1934) and Dr.
Frederick R. Baldwin 1860—1920) had married in 1893.
By 1903 they had three children (Douglas, Helen, and Elizabeth)
and were living in Minneapolis, where Frederick worked
as a physician at the Murray Care addictions
treatment center. He later joined the staff at the
Glen Lake tuberculosis sanatorium in Minnesota,
where he worked until his early death at age sixty.
On December 30, 1903, Helen was in Chicago visiting
her fifty-year-old mother, Ida Hines Parris (1853-),
and the pair went to the Mr.
Bluebeard matinee
at the city's new Iroquois Theater. Helen and her
mother were seated on the first floor within a few
feet of an opened fire escape door, making them
among the least imperiled people in the theater. It
is fortunate, however, that she agreed to an interview with
the press because her remarks (above) provide a
coherent description of events.
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Helen and her husband's roots went deep in America's
history. As great and great-great-granddaughters of
John Wygant / Weigand who fought at Valley Forge and
was at West Point when British spy John AndrÉ was
captured, Helen and her mother were members of
Daughters of the American Revolution. Frederick's
ancestors were among early colonists in Connecticut,
his father, Rufus J. Baldwin, an influential
attorney in Minneapolis.
Helen's parents may have been divorced. James
Parris, a photographer, petitioned the court in
Saint Paul, Minnesota, for a divorce in 1891, citing
Ida's abandonment three years earlier.
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